France narrows February trade gap on surging aeronautic sales

France's trade deficit narrowed in February, thanks to growing exports, especially buoyant sales of transport equipment, mainly aeronautic exports, customs figures showed on Wednesday.

The country's trade deficit dropped by 250 million euros (about 270 million U.S. dollars) to 3.4 billion euros, according to data released by French customs services.

The value of sales abroad, in February, stood at 37.3 billion euros, up 1.4 percent after they had fallen by 2.5 percent a month earlier, thanks to good performance of transport equipment' exports and better trade results in European market.

Airbus generated 2.29 billion euros after offering 23 aircraft over the period against 1.726 billion euros recorded in January.

Imports grew by 0.6 percent to 40.8 billion euros as a rise in pharmaceutical and electrical purchases was offset by falling energy imports, according to the report.

For the past 12 months, the cumulated trade deficit narrowed to 50.9 billion euros in total compared to 53.6 billion euros reported in 2014. (1 euro = 1.08 U.S. dollars) Endit